Whitegates Care Home can accommodate up to 21 older people with a variety of care needs. At the time of inspection, there were 13 people living at the home and one person who was staying for a respite break.
This was an unannounced, comprehensive inspection carried out over two days on 7 and 8 July 2015.
There was a registered manager at the home at the time of the inspection. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
The manager explained to us that particular circumstances had meant they had not been able to fully undertake their role. They explained this had impacted upon staff support, including supervisions and training and their ability to check that people were receiving a high quality service. This was evidenced by the findings of the inspection.
We found a number of breaches of the Health and Social Care Regulations 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can see the action we have told the provider to take at the back of the full version of this report.
The feedback we received from people was that care workers were kind and they were happy living at Whitegates Care Home. Some of the individual comments we received included, “I am very well looked after here and I am happy” and, “They do their best and their best is good” and, “The overall picture is good”. The inspection findings showed that staff knew people well and understood their likes, dislikes and what was important to them.
There were systems in place to reduce the risk of harm to people using the service. Risks to people were assessed and plans put in place to ensure staff safely supported people.
Recruitment systems were robust and made sure that the right staff were recruited to keep people safe. New staff did not commence employment until satisfactory employment checks such as Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificates and references had been obtained.
Medicines were kept within their recommended temperature ranges and the service had processes and record for obtaining and disposing of medicines. Storage for some medicines was not compliant with the relevant legislation. When administering medicines, the care workers lacked a process to secure medicines if they had to undertake another task.
The Medicines Administration Records lacked clarity around the time “when required” medicines had been administered and therefore we could not be assured that the minimum interval between doses had been maintained or the total daily dose for two “pain killers” taken “when required” had not been exceeded.
The management team undertook a variety of audits to check the environment was safe. However, these audits did not identify some environmental issues we saw during the inspection.
We saw that people had an individual plan, detailing the support they needed and how they wanted this to be provided. The staff on duty knew the people they were supporting and the choices they had made about their care and their lives. People were supported to maintain their independence and control over their lives.
Staff had not received supervision in accordance with the home’s policy and in addition, a significant amount of training was either out of date or not competed. This meant we could not be sure that staff had been supported to understand how to safely and effectively meet people’s needs.
People chose what they wanted to do. Some people spent time in the communal lounges and others preferred to spend time in their rooms. Where people spent time in their rooms they had the equipment they needed to maintain their independence.
Whitegates Care Home did not have an effective system for listening to, recording and acting on people’s feedback to drive improvements to the quality and safety of the service.